I graduated from one of those Minnesotan miracle school districts in 2007. I think I got a reasonable education -- it wasn't great compared to what people in private schools got, but it set me up to succeed in college.
I now live in Chicago, which is the third largest school district in the United States. It's completely broken.
* The schools are massively segregated -- both by income and by race. The wealthy leadership of the city clearly decided a long time ago to give up on the public school system and send their children to private school. Even in middle class neighborhoods like Hyde Park, the divide is clear: if you're poor or black, you go to the local public school. If you can afford it, you don't.
* The school district is trying to close down 50 odd elementary schools, almost all of them in the ghettos. Why? Because population loss has eroded the tax income from those areas to the point where they can barely operate anymore.
* The entire teachers union went on strike for a few days earlier this year to protest salary and benefit cuts, increased testing, and the city's neglect for the school system. They didn't really win -- the salary cuts were mostly averted, but the tests keep rolling in.
* For every 100 students who enters CPS as a freshman in high school, only 6 ever get a bachelors degree.
The schools back home in Minnesota aren't perfect or even particularly good. They're mediocre. They're ok. But they're so much better than in Chicago (and many other parts of the country) that I will seriously consider moving back to Minneapolis when I start having kids.
I'm not sure what you expect the school system to do for the total breakdown of social structure in vast swaths of Chicago. Middle class people would be insane to keep their kids in a school system where gangs have marked off territory in most of the schools and the majority of kids are from poor, single-parent homes. Even the middle class blacks who stuck it out on the south side for so long have given up--Chicago lost 200,000 of them in the last decade. The south side has become a literal ghetto--increasingly filled only with people who can't afford to get out. The schools can't fix a community on the edge of viability, raising children with no fathers, no structure of authority, and no prospects.
I attended one of the schools in the Chicago suburbs. A public school. I think that my high school experience was pretty good; even comparable to some of the Minnesotan "miracle school" experiences. I'm just saying, before you move away from Chicago, check out the suburbs, where all the privileged people have fled to.
I now live in Chicago, which is the third largest school district in the United States. It's completely broken.
* The schools are massively segregated -- both by income and by race. The wealthy leadership of the city clearly decided a long time ago to give up on the public school system and send their children to private school. Even in middle class neighborhoods like Hyde Park, the divide is clear: if you're poor or black, you go to the local public school. If you can afford it, you don't.
* The school district is trying to close down 50 odd elementary schools, almost all of them in the ghettos. Why? Because population loss has eroded the tax income from those areas to the point where they can barely operate anymore.
* The entire teachers union went on strike for a few days earlier this year to protest salary and benefit cuts, increased testing, and the city's neglect for the school system. They didn't really win -- the salary cuts were mostly averted, but the tests keep rolling in.
* For every 100 students who enters CPS as a freshman in high school, only 6 ever get a bachelors degree.
The schools back home in Minnesota aren't perfect or even particularly good. They're mediocre. They're ok. But they're so much better than in Chicago (and many other parts of the country) that I will seriously consider moving back to Minneapolis when I start having kids.